THE UNMEASURED VARIABLE
Faith is a vital sign — and almost no one at the bedside is trained to read it.
Decades of peer-reviewed research show that a patient's spiritual life shapes their quality of life, their treatment decisions, and even their survival. We're doing clinical work in every room. The question is whether anyone is tending the patient's spiritual need — and whether the one healthcare professional equipped to do so is in the room at all.
This is where Your Faith and Healthcare are Connected.
— RISK
Silent questions that predict a higher death rate.
When faith goes unsupported, it can turn to struggle — and religious struggle is a measurable mortality risk lying undiagnosed in hospital beds. Few are trained to notice it.
+28%
higher risk of death for patients who endorsed "wondered whether God had abandoned me" — after controlling for physical and mental health factors.
Pargament et al., Arch Intern Med, 2001
2x
Mortality tracked with the length and intensity of the struggle. Chronic, unresolved struggle fared worst of all.
Pargament et al., 2001 & 2004
3f
Spiritual coping factors — believing God has abandoned them, questioning God's love, and demonic influence in their situation — each independently predicted greater risk of mortality.
Arch Intern Med, 2001
— INTERVENTION
The reading only one healthcare professional can take.
Faith left unengaged pushes patients toward futile aggressive care. Community support alone isn't enough — outcomes only turn when the healthcare team itself enters the spiritual conversation. We need to be taking a spiritual history.
2.9x
Patients relying on faith to cope — but unengaged clinically — were nearly 3× as likely to need intensive, life-prolonging care in their final week.
Phelps et al., JAMA, 2009
-81%
When the healthcare team provided spiritual support, ICU deaths fell sharply and hospice enrollment more than doubled.
Balboni et al., JAMA Intern Med, 2013
+28%
higher quality of life near death (or otherwise) for patients whose spiritual needs were supported by their care team.
Balboni et al., J Clin Oncol, 2010
Faith is not simply a private matter to ignore. It is a clinical variable — and left unattended, fare worse, have increased fear, and suffer more significantly overall.
— GET INVOLVED
One mission, many ways to get involved.
Whether you are learning, are in practice, you train, you teach, give, or pray — there's a place for you in the work of connecting faith and healthcare.
Belong to a national community of Christian healthcare professionals from all over the world. Faith support, advocacy, fellowship, and resources for every stage of your life and career.
Your gifts equip healthcare professionals to care for the whole patient, helps restore physicians from burnout, and sends healthcare missionaries where they are needed most.
Find peer community near you — campus ministries, local councils, and specialty networks that keep you from practicing alone.
Continuing education, clinical training, and topics in healthcare to integrate faith into practice with skill and confidence - Free to members.
Conversations with clinicians with unique perspectives and Christian healthcare professionals living out their faith at the bedside — wisdom for the calling, on YouTube, on your commute, or wherever you watch and listen.
Short-term international missions dedicated to providing healthcare while spreading the gospel by sending medical, dental and surgical teams around the world.
Short-term missions that provide academic teaching and clinical training upon request from governments, healthcare professional training institutions, and hospitals while building relationships with local colleagues and modelling the compassion, care and love of Jesus.
CMDA National Convention, regional retreats, breakfasts, local gatherings and Bible studies, and overseas tours; gathering together under the banner of our faith and healthcare- connected.